KUWAIT CITY – British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday said “reform – ‘not repression” was the way to guarantee stability in the Arab world, in a visit to Kuwait as part of a regional tour. The day after he became the first foreign leader to visit Cairo since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Cameron told Kuwait’s national assembly that protests sweeping the region were a precious moment of opportunity.
“For decades, some have argued that stability required highly controlling regimes, and that reform and openness would put that stability at risk,” the prime minister said. But he argued that this was a “false choice”, saying: “As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse.”
He said the most resilient societies possessed key democratic building blocks such as government accountability, freedom to communicate and freedom to learn and work. “In short, reform – ‘not repression – is the only way to maintain stability,” Cameron said.
In Cairo, Cameron met Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s de facto leader, just 10 days after long-time president Mubarak stood down in the face of an unprecedented popular uprising, the state-run MENA news agency said.
